I absolutely love my Bifrost II, you definitely made a great choice with your purchase.
But I had to chuckle a little about the part where you said that your initial impressions are "Wow!", just as I have to chuckle every time someone says they can actually hear a difference from one DAC to the next.
Let me explain, don't rage-hit the reply button just yet… ;p
I have pretty good hearing, at least on paper. I'll turn 40 later this year, but I'm still able to hear from about 20Hz to about 19kHz, and I can easily hear a UPS or FedEx truck turn around the corner three blocks down the road while I'm sitting in my office facing out the back of the house with all windows closed, AND tell you which of the two trucks it is.
I can also easily discern the differences in sound between different power amps, preamps, most tubes, speakers, headphones, all that jazz.
But for the life of me, I can't hear a difference between, say, my Bifrost 2 and my Modius, for example. A-B'ing them blindfolded, I honestly couldn't tell you which is which. The only difference between audiophile DACs (by which I don't mean "expensive", but "well made" regardless of price) that I can hear is minute differences in noise floors, but not really in their respective coloration.
BUT!
Keeping everything else the same, I can listen to the Bifrost 2 all day without fatiguing, while Modius makes me want to take a break after two hours. (I even tried this blind, asked someone to hook one of them up for me and hide it under the table, without telling me which it is.)
I have no idea why this is, because A-B'ing them I honestly can't hear much of a difference in how they render their output signal. Especially the upper mids and highs, which is what I feel causes the fatigue for me. Modius doesn't sound harsher to me, Bifrost 2 doesn't sound warmer. Maybe Bifrost 2 is just a tad more accurate in how it keeps both channels synchronized, and a slight shift in timing between the two, which might become more pronounced in its effect at higher frequencies, causes some weird sort of cognitive dissonance for my brain, making me feel like I needed a break after a little while. I have no clue.
So, yeah. That's why I have to chuckle every time someone says they hear an _immediate_ difference between two DACs. There definitely MUST be a difference, there's no doubt about it. But I just can't hear it, at least not right away. Try as I might.
